Manabi Straight! – 10

With only 34 hours left, the girls have managed to get just 32% of the signatures. While they’re outside, Mei and Mikan find out that the work is about to begin to replace the old clock tower with a modern one. They are sad to see this happen, but are more surprised when Manabi’s voice suddenly comes over the announcement system. Pretending to be the clock fairy, Manabi says that she would like to see the school festival one more time and pleads for the students to sign the petition. Believing every bit of it, Mikan starts crying because she takes pity on the clock fairy. Unfortunately, there is a malfunction with the new clock, and it causes the tower to explode the next day. The student council room is damaged to the point where they can’t use it anymore, so Manabi puts up a sign asking for signatures. Staring into the distance, she hardly notices when that sign blows away in the wind. Shimojima, however, finds her and takes her along with the others to the old dormitory to use as a replacement.

While Manabi and company start to clean the place up, one of other girls at the school finds Manabi’s paper sign and puts it up on the bulletin board. After seeing it, Shimojima amends the sign with a note indicating that the girls are now at the old dormitory. Manabi meanwhile voices her frustration at how no one understands that the school festival would be fun if everyone got involved. Mei admits that the old her didn’t understand that, and although she does now, their theme for the festival is understood only by the five of them and not by the rest of the school. As if on cue, a familiar face suddenly shows up at the dormitory: the head of the drama club. Just like before, the drama club starts helping out with the new place, and Manabi is so moved that she start crying.

As the girls get to work, more and more of their peers join them, and by evening, even the principal comes to check out what’s going on. After reminding Manabi of how she had said that she would come to like this school, the principal asks Manabi if that has come true. Manabi of course answers yes. With the sky getting dark, Shimojima hooks up some lights and lights up the dormitory. The girls continue their work inside, and when one girl comes to offer Mei a drink, Mei gets the courage to ask her to work together painting the walls. As Mikan and Manabi watch three girls put up the “New Student Government Room” sign, Mikan comments on how all this is like a school festival, and Manabi agrees. When the day that the signatures have to be turned in finally rolls around, Kyouko announces to Takako that Manabi and company didn’t get 70% of the signatures they needed. Instead, they got 76%.

Well I didn’t think they’d succeed at first, but they pulled it off with a lot of help from Shimojima. Manabi’s own clock fairy idea was so ridiculous that it became funny when Mikan believed it all. But there’s nothing like a restoration project to rally the school and get the signatures that they needed. In between, we got a lot of scenes of the girls forming bonds as friends, which is largely what this show is about. Actually, now that I think about it, one of the early promos had a missile-like object blowing up the clock tower. I wonder if that got changed or something because most of the other shots from the promos ended up in the show exactly as they were shown. Anyway, there are now only two more episodes to go for the school festival and then the conclusion to the series.